The sides have undertook to refrain from any action that might destabilize the situation

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TIRASPOL, January 15 (Itar-Tass) — The Joint Control Commission supervising the peacekeeping operation in Transdniestria has reached agreements that would bring down tensions after an incident at a peacekeepers post where Moldovan citizen Vadim Pisar was wounded lethally on January 1, according to a joint statement of Moldovan, Transdniestrian and Russian members of the commission published on Saturday.

“The sides have undertook to refrain from any action that might destabilize the situation and proposed that Moldovan representatives set up mobile police teams in the area of the peacekeepers post,” the statement said.

The incident happened at the ninth peacekeepers post on a bridge across the Dniester River, near the town of Vadul-lui-Voda, at 07:15 a.m. local time (09:15 a.m. Moscow time) on January 1. Two teenagers from the Pyryta village on the eastern bank of the Dniester River were riding towards Chisinau. When the car entered the bridge, the driver ignored the stop road sign at the peacekeepers post and disobeyed the demand to pull over. About 20 minutes later the car returned and drove on without stopping. The peacekeepers post commander fired into the air in warning before firing at the car. The peacekeepers called an ambulance and the boy was taken to the Chisinau hospital. He died of a big loss of blood.

Following the incident, a number of protest action were staged in front of the checkpoint demanding to punish the Russian peacekeeper who wounded Pisar, and to remove Russian peacekeepers posts.

The standoff between the breakaway territory of Transdienstria and Moldova's central government escalated into a bloody armed conflict in 1992. The joint peacekeeping force of Moldova, Russia and Transdniestria was deployed in the conflict zone in compliance with the agreement of July 21, 1992. Russia's peacekeepers were brought into the conflict zone in 1992.

The Russian contingent had 2,400 servicemen in 1992. Yet it was reduced to two battalions in 1997 and Russia unilaterally cut its contingent to 500 servicemen in 1998 in compliance with the Odessa agreements. Transdniestrian authorities insist that the number of Russian servicemen must be increased, while Moldova proposes to replace the peacekeepers with civilian observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).